Game Combines Creativity And Wit -- Comotion Is Charades With A Twist

In high school, Mark Medley played board games with his friends, but they had a special rule.

It was simple: Any new rule could be implemented immediately into any game being played.

From those days, a new game was born. Medley calls it CoMotion.

CoMotion is a fast-paced competition of creativity and wit, a hybrid of such games as Monopoly, Pictionary, charades, Trivial Pursuit and Uno.

Medley, 29, attended Washington High School in the Tacoma area. When he came up with the idea in 1986, Medley called the game Actionary, and Medley and his friends and family would play.

He didn't think about taking it any further until he used it as a marketing-class project while at Azusa Pacific University in California. Then, when friends kept asking to play and wanted to know how to get it, Medley decided he could market the game.

He joined forces with college friend Jared Ruth of Greeley, Colo., to produce the game. Medley worked on refining the game concept and researching game markets while Ruth did the design work.

Family and friends invested $100,000 so the two could hire a printing company to print and package the game, as well as warehouse it and fill orders.

Medley and Ruth spent a year developing a prototype, designing components, play-testing and researching the 2,000 words and phrases utilized.

CoMotion is basically charades played as a board game - with a few twists. Four or more players divide into two to four teams. The first team rolls the dice, one to indicate how many squares to move forward on the game board and the other indicates whether it will be a CoMotion round, meaning all teams playing at the same time.

If it's a CoMotion round, the object is to act out one idea to a teammate before the other teams succeed. The first team to successfully convey one of 2,000 words and phrases in 500 subjects before the timer runs out moves ahead.

In November 1997, Turn Off The TV agreed to start carrying Actionary, now renamed CoMotion, at its two Seattle stores, in its catalog and on its Web site.

"We felt it's a game that has a lasting appeal," said Mary Allison, vice president of sales. "We rate our games based on longevity and how much fun it is. This game ranked high on both of those."

Medley and Ruth got a big boost in 1997 when Nordstrom agreed to carry it for the Christmas season. Nordstrom picked it up again in 1998.

"Games like CoMotion provide our customers with something different, a little out of the ordinary," said Ted Allen of Nordstrom.

The $30 game was selected one of the top 100 games of 1998 by Games Magazine, an industry publication for toys and games.

"I think the biggest success to a game is the ability to entertain a consumer in their home which then results in their friends and family going back to the store to purchase a copy for themselves. It's the experience factor," Medley said in a recent phone interview from CoMotion's Glendora, Calif., office.

CoMotion has now sold 4,000 copies, is available in 50 stores in the Pacific Northwest and Medley and Ruth are preparing to launch the game nationwide.

The two will keep their day jobs in Los Angeles. Ruth is in sales, and Medley is a product manager at Boone International, which manufactures dry erase boards.

They'll continue to work on the game and develop some spinoffs. Possibilities include a version for kids, an extreme version and possibly CoMotion translated into other languages.